Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Essay

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Growing Up Satrapi

It is hard to tell the story of a “typical” youth and it is hard to write a story that relates to experiences in everyone’s lives, but this is exactly what Marjane Satrapi accomplished in her memoir. Persepolis is the story of a child’s growth from preteen to adult. The specific challenges that Satrapi faces are unique to her situation, but we can ask whether they accurately portray the psychological development that children go through. Do her reactions to situations resemble the reactions that most children have to similar problems? While reading Satrapi’s story, it is necessary to understand that the circumstances she encounters and her reaction to these circumstances parallel how youths around the world…show more content…

In this way, teachers become role models for the students as well as rule enforcers. They teach children both how to read and write, and the overall beliefs and customs of society. In Persepolis, Marjane paints a picture of her grammar school in Iran during the revolution. In a very short excerpt, she shows a teacher wearing a veil, watching a group of all girls and telling them that they need to wear veils also. In a very casual form, Satrapi has described how her experience in grammar school has socialized her. The fact that she is separated by gender at school told Marjane that her society believes that men and women are different, and unequal, beings. The fact that Marjane sees her teacher in a veil, and is explicitly told by her teacher that she also must wear a veil shows how she

2 was taught to model her teacher’s behavior and also that her society believes that women should be covered up as much as possible. These were the aspects of grammar school that Marjane took from her schooling; this is how she was socialized by her education.
Like a child’s school environment, the surrounding community in which a child grows up also “instills its norms and values in its members, through tradition, modeling, and/or formal education” (Berns 392). There are two

Unbeknownst to some people, a graphic novel can be a very powerful vehicle for communicating a message of great seriousness and importance. In France in 2003, the Iranian-born writer and illustrator, Marjane Satrapi, published her internationally acclaimed autobiographical comic, “Persepolis.” The novel chronicles her childhood in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that were overshadowed by the displacement of the Shah’s regime, the Islamic Revolution, and war with Iraq. The French contemporary…

involved in the sudden
transition.
As a member of the Iranian diaspora, Marjane Satrapi endured many hardships in her
efforts to transition from Middle Eastern culture to a more modernist Western culture. Her series
of graphic novel memoirs, Persepolis, depict her childhood growing up in Iran during both the
Islamic Revolution and the Iran- Iraq War, and moving to Austria as one of many emigrants of
Iran at the time. Marjane Satrapi's memoir is just one example of an exile bearing the burden of…

Persepolis
The book Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Summary written by Marjane Satrapi is about a girl who describes her upbringing and life in her country, Iran. She enlightens us about the two main revolutions, the overthrowing of the Shah and the institution of the Islamic regime. Shah ruled with an iron fist who was helped by the British who saw nothing but the benefits and profits they stood to make. In a way we gain perspective about some of the misconceptions that are shown by the…

Beset with the unthinkable, the Islamic Revolution defines turbulent times for many Iranians (Tehran). Numerous females including Satrapi were robbed of their social rights due to westernizing and secular efforts (Tehran). In turn, the Islamic Revolution undermined the younger Satrapi’s ability to come to terms with her own identity; nevertheless, she now writes to share her experience with oppression and her later journey towards cultural integration.
It is a historical dispute that woman did…

It did not take me very long to get through the graphic memoir, Persepolis not only because it is a sort of comic book, but because I could not put it down. I chose to read the interview between Robert Root and Marjane Satrapi instead of the TED talk because I love the raw dialogue between the two. Through this interview, Satrapi’s strong independence and blunt words ring through loud and clear just as her character in Persepolis. I find her honesty very refreshing, “I have always said, even verbally…

and used to carry out the purpose of men. One way in which men have taken the power away from women is by taking away their education, and in turn their ability to develop independently and to be. functional parts of society. In her book Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi described the struggle of growing up as a young girl in Iran, as well as the support given to her by her parents. They encouraged her to pursue education so that she was able to develop her own ideas. Similarly, Margaret Fuller’s father…

The graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a political and personal account of a young girl’s growth to maturity. The novel serves as an autobiography of the author’s childhood in Tehren, Iran. It describes what it was like to grow up during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the end of the Shah’s regime, and the war with Iraq. One of the most prominent themes in the novel is the clash between modernity and fundamentalism. The reader can observe this conflict through Iran's internal oppositions…

In the book Persepolis, a non-fiction piece about the author Marjane Satrapi’s life in a changing Iran, Satrapi explores the idea of tensions between old and new by referencing conversations with her grandma, talking about parties, the transition of the veil into society, talking about her school, noting the demonstrations that took place in the streets, and discussing the cultural revolution that occurred. Satrapi purposefully communicates this theme to the audience to contrast the Iran she grew…

Western culture has often misperceived the east and the way that their society functions. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Satrapi uses graphic novels as a way to demonstrate to the western culture how the east has been misrepresented. The use of media helps to depict to the west how their views of the east may have been unfairly formed in the past. The media has only revealed limited knowledge that only shows partial perspectives because it is difficult to get perspectives of the minorities although…

Why Marjane Satrapi chose to tell her story Persepolis in the graphic form
The graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi was written in the graphic medium to appeal to a wider audience. Literary critic, Manuela Constantino, proposes that “the combination of a visual representation and a child’s point of view makes the story easily accessible and therefore attracts a wide range of readers.” (Constantino, 2008: 2) Another plausible reason for Satrapi's choice to do the novel in this medium is the…